Retail sales in the brick and mortar stores during the Black Friday weekend (including Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Saturday and Sunday) were down nearly 3% nationwide with a loss of $1.7 billion from last year. the average amount of money spent by an American during the four day weekend dropped to $407.02 from $423.55. The total sales dropped to $57.4
billion, drop 3% from last year’s $59.1 billion.

Even the seemingly optimistic report was misleading. Here's a section of USAToday's article,

"....A "temporary reprieve from pump prices, and a lingering wealth effect
from rising home prices and record-high equity markets have helped
support consumer confidence and consumer spending,'' Piegza wrote in a
note to clients. "Going forward, however, temporary factors can only do
so much.''
The growth was highly unbalanced, said Diane Swonk,
chief economist at Mesirow Financial. Cuts in food-stamp benefits held
down food sales, and apparel sales are so weak that clothing prices are
falling amid a highly promotional holiday season.
"People are buying big things — but they aren't buying clothes,'' Swonk said. "Grocers are complaining.''..."

Last week, jobless claims surged by 68,000 to 368,000 new people filing for initial unemployment benefits. I don't find this to be very alarming, because the only reason why the numbers drop is because of seasonal jobs. Simply put, there weren't any jobs to begin with.